


Death is no parenthesis

by maharetr



Category: The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Reality, Gen, Hallucinations, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Team Lonely Loser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/pseuds/maharetr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake takes a deep breath. “Okay, I see things, right? And I can’t tell if what I’m seeing is real, or if other people can see it, or whatever, but...”  Jake turns his head and looks properly at Cougar. “I can touch real things. That’s how I know they’re real. Can… can I touch you?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death is no parenthesis

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Team Means Never Alone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/957398) by [omens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/omens/pseuds/omens). 
  * Inspired by [Phenomenology](https://archiveofourown.org/works/988154) by [mific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/pseuds/mific). 



> Thanks to Kisahawklin and Mific for the betaing, and to Omens for the idea that _ate my brain_.

“Oh god, oh my god, what…? Sergeant!”

Opening his eyes is a slow, uncertain process.

“Oh, shit, man, _shit_.” There’s some young corporal leaning over him, crying. Cougar wants to apologize for that, for the tears on the other man’s face, but opening his mouth just makes him realize how parched his throat is, how desperately he wants water. The corporal has left Cougar’s field of vision, has left him staring up at the pale ceiling. He tries to lick his lips, but he can’t move his tongue.

“ _Medic_ ,” the corporal is screaming. “I need help here! _Medic_!”

 _It’s fine_ , Cougar wants to say, but he’s not sure it is, actually. He can drag the fingers of his left hand against the carpet, if he concentrates. The carpet is wet. He can’t replicate the movement with his right hand, no matter how he focuses, and relief washes over him, bringing with it a wave of tired. He lets his eyes slip closed again.

“Sir, I don’t think you... sir!” It’s a different sort of panic in the corporal’s voice now.

“What the fuck?” Wade. Cougar keeps his eyes closed; Wade doesn’t deserve the respect of Cougar’s gaze. “What the fuck have you _done_?” 

That’s simultaneously blindingly obvious, but also an immensely complicated thing to answer. Cougar is marshaling thoughts behind closed eyelids, considering phrasing and emphasis, but hands – Wade’s, surely – have grabbed the front of his shirt, jerking him inches off the floor, and _Dios_ , that _hurts_ , hot fire all the way up into his shoulder. He would scream, if he could make his throat work.

Wade is snarling still, and the corporal is yelling, and at some point the medics arrive. They don’t calm things exactly, but they do deliver him the sweet sting of a hypodermic, and a dark that rises up and carries him away.

~*~

When he wakes again, it’s to the bright lights and white curtains of the infirmary. The bed is raised enough that he has a clear view of Wade sitting at the foot of his bed, paging through a file. Commanding officer’s privilege, Cougar thinks, vaguely. He hopes the corporal is okay. 

He’s still desperately thirsty. There’s a plastic cup on the night stand, but one glance at Wade tells him he’s going to be feeding himself ice chips. Cougar reaches across himself and snags the edge of the cup between two fingers.

“You’ve made a fucking mess of things,” Wade snarls, low, so they’re not going to be overheard. Cougar thinks he’s doing all right: he can prop the cup upright in his lap using his bandaged hand, and it turns out he can find his mouth with his left, even though the heavy painkillers. That’s pretty damn self-sufficient, all things considered. He holds a few chips on his tongue, resisting the urge to whimper with pleasure.

“We were due to ship back out next week, except you go and pull _this_ shit.”

Cougar tries to press the ice against his lips without spilling them out of his mouth, but he can already tell the coordination is beyond him – he settles for shifting the ice around his mouth, wetting his tongue. “I have to find another sniper,” Wade says. “You’re going to be out of action for fucking months while you do PT on those tendons. You got most of them, you fucking moron.”

All of them, Cougar hopes. The ice is almost all melted. He runs his cold tongue over his lips, and it’s so exquisite he nearly shivers. It occurs to him that the painkillers have made him stoned. Legally high, Cougar thinks vaguely, and it makes him smile. Wade’s opening his mouth again, but whatever he sees in Cougar’s expression makes him physically back up, off the bed. Cougar’s smile warms into something nearly pleased.

“I thought you were tougher than this mental breakdown shit, man,” Wade snaps, but it’s a parting shot, delivered in full retreat, and then Cougar is alone for valuable moments. 

He studies the cast: white plaster against white sheets. He hadn’t anticipated them forcibly immobilizing his hand. To the extent that he’d thought ahead, he’d been visualizing bandages, something he could get through to flex his hand and re-tear the tendons, if need be, if they declared him mentally competent to serve and ordered him back out there. He’s heard of weirder things. 

~*~

The doctor comes in sometime later, interrupting Cougar’s dozing.

“You’ve got options,” the doctor says bluntly. “You can sign yourself into the local hospital, or we can file to get you put on psych hold, and you go in anyway. Which do y’want?”

The anger simmering under the doctor’s tight expression is far more what Cougar had anticipated hitting up against coming home. But even this anger is different – he’s seen it after dragging in soldiers who died, seen it in the doctors who had patients on their hands who they didn’t know how to save.

The military doesn’t want him anymore. He wants a third option. He wants… he doesn’t know what he wants. 

“I’ll sign,” he says, eventually. An adviser comes and talks through each page with him, filling out his responses, a tiny mercy, and he adds his awkward, left-handed signature and date on the dotted lines.

Getting dressed is a slow, fumbling affair. Someone offers him a bag, and on top of it is his hat. He stares at it – he hadn’t expected to see it again – and jams it firmly on his head before Wade or a doctor decide there’s a way they can deprive him of it, somehow. The familiar weight and pressure of it is the most normal he’s felt in days.

~*~

He’s never been in a psych hospital before. He has no idea what makes a good one, but this one seems okay: his room has a window that looks out on a courtyard and there’s grass out there that’s mostly alive, and a tree to sit under. Nothing stinks of disinfectant. Then again, he’s just come off tour – light switches and power outlets are unbelievable marvels right now. He has an entire, tiny room, with a single bed, all to himself. There’s an entire, tiny bathroom, all to himself. The thought of being able to have _another_ hot shower even though he’d had one yesterday makes him want to cry with gratitude, and he has no idea if that’s because he’s crazy or not.

A nurse feeds him pills, all different sizes and colors from a little paper cup. She rattles off the names, but none of them mean anything to Cougar. He swallows them; he’s used to following orders. The thought makes him choke, and he has to breathe slowly and carefully so he doesn’t throw the pills back up.

“Carlos,” she says as he breathes. “Your sister’s called. Do you want to talk to her?”

He doesn’t. He doesn’t, but he can’t not.

They transfer the call to the phone on the wall in the rec room. This is not the sort of place he wants to have this sort of conversation with people nearby and the TV blaring, but he drags a chair over and picks up the receiver.

“Carlos?” Gabriella’s voice is choked. “Are you there? Are you okay?”

Speaking is hard. It’s so hard. “Sí,” he manages. “I’m here.”

She inhales like she’s going to sob, and then she’s off, rapid-fire Spanish that hits him somewhere in the chest. “They came to our _house_ , they said they had a message from the Department of _Defense_ , we thought you might’ve been _killed_.” She sobs in another breath. 

“Lo siento,” he whispers. “Lo siento…” Because he’s almost never heard his sister cry.

“Goddamnit,” she mutters, sniffing hard, and he takes that to mean that their mother is out of earshot. He nearly smiles. “They said you hurt yourself,” she says, equally low, disbelievingly.

“I… sí,” he says, helplessly. Guilt and shame burns in his gut.

“Shit,” she whispers, processing. He finds himself hunching in around the phone, as if he could hug her voice somehow. “You idiot,” she says, and he chokes, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

There’s commotion in the background, indistinct discussion, and then his mother’s there. She doesn’t yell; it’s so much worse than that. She cries, wildly. He marshals reserves from somewhere and offers her his voice, tells her he’s okay, he’s fine, he loves her, he’s sorry, he’s so sorry. She wails for her baby, for her little boy, and getting gutshot hurt less than this. 

Someone coaxes her away from the phone, and then it’s just Gabriella, her breathing far steadier now. She gives him a minute.

“You okay?” she asks, then, quiet.

He tries to brush the tears off his face with immobilised fingertips. “No,” he says. 

“Me either,” she says. He rests his forehead against the wall and closes his eyes. “When do you get out? Are they letting you out?”

He takes a breath, tries to think longer than the next instant. “Yes. I don’t know when. It depends on… everything.”

“Okay,” she says levelly. “Give me a day’s heads up, if you can. I’ll drive up and –”

“Gabi, no,” he says. “It’s too far, don’t –.”

“– collect – shut up,” she says, barely pausing for breath. “I will square it with work, and come and collect you, and we will go and stock your fridge and I will cook for you, and I will stay on your couch for as long as I damn well please. Clear?”

Cougar’s throat is closing up again, for completely different reasons.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

“Yeah, well…” Her voice wavers. “I’m glad you’re not dead, asshole.” 

He’s not sure he can say the same quite yet. “Love you,” he says instead, because that’s never going to change.

Hanging up is harder than picking up had been. He stands for a moment, trying to reel in his nerves. All he wants to do right now is curl up in bed with the door closed, but that’d get noticed by someone and marked down on his file, so instead he walks out into the courtyard. There are patients under the tree, and he veers casually around them, heading for the far wall. It’s sun-warmed, and he pulls his hat low over his face, ostensibly to cut the glare, and sits, lulling himself down with his breathing and his heart rate. He hopes it counts as social enough; it’s all he can manage about now.

By the time the glow has faded from around his hat, his hand is throbbing like a bad tooth, beating merrily and agonizingly along with his heartbeat. Another ‘depends’: complying with his meds schedule. He levers himself to his feet, and goes in search of whatever passes as the dispensary here. Whatever they gave him in the infirmary is still messing with his head: he gets lost twice, and it’s a pretty damn small compound, comparatively. It’s the meds that have removed any of the worry he should be having about that, he decides.

The painkillers are a pale comparison to the infirmary drugs: they make his world fuzz at the edges, and dull the pain, but he’s wincingly aware of his hand when he tries to move too fast. The last thing he feels like doing is eating, but the people drifting towards the dining hall are an indication of what time the rest of the place thinks it is, even if his body disagrees. He follows.

The dining hall is every cafeteria and commissary he’s ever been in. There are long tables, people with trays, and the smell of something approximating food. It simultaneously manages to be one of the quieter cafeterias he’s known – many people sitting silent and alone, picking at their food, and one of the loudest – many of the others are talking in loud, carrying voices, whether anyone is paying attention or not.

Cougar grabs a tray and goes for anything that doesn’t require a knife. Balancing it all one-handed is a challenge, and he goes for the nearest, emptiest table that doesn’t have any shouting people at it. He takes up his fork and forces himself to eat. Food is fuel, it’s a tick in his file, and he probably needs it to line his stomach for the anti-inflammatories. Besides, he’s had far, far worse food than this and called it good. He can deal.

He’s maybe a third of the way through before he starts paying attention to the person at the other end of the table. One of the alone and silent people, a guy. Not picking at his food, though, Cougar realizes, and not exactly keeping to himself, either.

The other guy is staring at him. Cougar keeps his eyes on his food, and shifts his attention to the left. The other guy has blond hair and glasses, and has barely touched his food. He’s half hunched over his tray, turned slightly towards Cougar, frozen, staring. He doesn’t seem to have realized that Cougar is on to him; his expression is wide-eyed…Cougar can’t tell if it’s shock or fear, not from his peripheral vision.

Military etiquette dictated that you glared right back at them until the other person either backed off or escalated. Cougar has no idea what the rules are when the other person is presumably certified crazy.

Cougar escalates as gently as he knows how; he keeps eating, turns his head slightly, and makes eye contact.

The guy jerks backwards with a screech of chair legs, eyes huge behind his glasses, and then scrambles away from the table and out of the cafeteria like he’s under fire. It’s so fast, and so sudden, that Cougar’s left sitting, frozen in turn, not even sure what to do. His heart is jackhammering at the abruptness of it, and he forces a breath, and then another.

There are staff members filling the sudden silence, smoothing over the commotion. Several head out the door after the guy; one woman comes towards Cougar, hands spread, face open and concerned. 

Letting them know that he’s rattled by a guy running _away_ from him is not going to be a tick in his file . He nods calmly to her concern, and turns back to his plate until she goes away.

The meds they give him that evening take his situational awareness from bad to worse; he goes from not being aware that there’d been someone sitting at the other end of his table, to bumping into the edge of his bed because he can’t judge distances. It’s terrifying, or it would be, if everything wasn’t wrapped in a detached fog. It makes cleaning his teeth and getting changed a laborious, exhausting process. He crawls into bed and drags the hospital blankets over his head. It feels better that way, somehow, and he drifts. But the drugs don’t bring him sleep, they trap him somewhere just under the surface, leaving him floundering, struggling in a smoky haze, gunfire and screaming and he’s causing all of it, he realizes, stalking people through the smoke with his rifle. He can’t drop his weapon, no matter how much he wants to, it’s part of his flesh now, seared into him and he wants to stop but he doesn’t want to stop and…

He wakes sobbing, his hand a ball of agony. The fear he’d almost wanted to feel last night is now a wild terror -- _not safe, not safe, not safe_ \-- and he rolls out of bed and hits the floor, winding himself and jarring his hand, and then he’s scrabbling across the floor to wedge himself into the corner. He has a clear view of the door, and the window’s in his peripheral vision enough that he’ll see an incursion. He has no weapon, and that’s terrifying, too. He grabs on of his laceless boots and gets a proper grip on it – projectiles are something. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, but he manages to stop crying before dawn lights the window. The shivering takes much longer to abate. 

By the time the wake-up shift come knocking he’s pulled himself together enough that he’s back in bed.

“Sleep well?” the nurse asks cheerfully, and he nods.

The dispensary is easier to find with everyone gravitating towards it. He takes his morning meds distrustfully, but he chokes them down. He can feel them sitting uncomfortably in his stomach as he goes for breakfast.

The startled guy from last night is nowhere to be seen. Cougar sits at the end of a different table, with two silent people who ignore him, and that’s fine by him. He doesn’t want trouble, he just wants to get out of here and… then what? He doesn’t know.

After breakfast a staff member gently waylays him into a consultation room. The doctor behind the desk introduces himself as Brian Radcliff; he’s a short, balding white guy, who gets most of the way into offering a handshake, before he realizes that Cougar can’t return the gesture. Cougar uses the awkward pause to sit down and pull his hat lower. He’d be just fine if no one touched him ever again. 

Cougar’s done more than enough of his fair share of psych assessments, and Dr. Radcliff is pretty good; he asks all the right questions, for a civilian shrink, anyway, but when Cougar opens his mouth the words don’t even make it into his throat. They stick in his chest, and he barely feels like he can breathe that high.

Dr. Radcliff nods in a semblance of sympathy and takes far too many notes.

 

Cougar reclaims his spot outside, against the wall. The sun won’t make it around for some hours yet, but he doesn’t mind being a little cold.

His situational awareness is improving; he notices the doctor emerging from the south wing, and of her interest in him, before she actually starts walking in his direction. She pauses several feet away.

“Carlos?” she asks.

It’s going to take a while to get used to not being ‘Cougar’ or ‘Sergeant’, to not being in a hierarchy, never mind this casual familiarity of people he does not know in return.

He nods, and gestures to the empty chair nearby. She drags it over, and still sits well clear of him; not fearful, just respectful of his space, like it was normal to not want anyone in a five-foot radius.

“I’m Dr. Zoe Benson,” she says. She doesn’t try and shake hands, and he’s willing to make eye contact with her for that. She looks steadily back at him. “I’m Jake Jensen’s therapist. You met him last night at dinner.”

Met isn’t the word he’d use, but okay. Some of that must leak through onto his expression, because she smiles wryly. “Encountered briefly, then. He’s a sweet man, and he’s got a whole tangle of things going on. None of them involve you, personally, but they sort of…coalesced around you, because you’re new, I think.” She grimaces slightly. “He has periods of pretty impressive hallucination, and latched onto you because you’re an unfamiliar face. He’s not violent, not at all, but he is pretty upset. It’s a big ask, I know, and you can say no to all of this – we’re the doctors, it’s our job to figure these ones out, after all – but would you be willing to chat to him, a little, to show him you’re just some guy?”

He stays silent, thinking it over. “I don’t chat,” he says, eventually; a statement, not a refusal. 

She laughs. “It’s all right, he’ll do enough talking for all three of us.” 

 

Dr. Benson’s treatment room is an exact copy of Dr. Radcliff’s: pale walls, lino floor, sturdy chairs and desk with a tissue box on it, he notes wryly. The desk and chairs are oriented… he can’t but help think ‘correctly’: side on to the door, so when Cougar sits in the far chair, he can see the door at a glance. It’s more comforting than he wants to admit.

It means that Cougar and this Jake Jensen have instant visual on each other through the glass pane in the door. Jake nudges the door open. 

Cougar isn’t sure how to negotiate eye contact with a crazy person, but Jake sets the tone by staring, slightly wide-eyed, and then jerking his gaze down to his shoes. He’s wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, and they fit him well enough that Cougar figures they came from somewhere other than the hospital supply closets. Jake’s hunched in on himself, one arm across his body to hold onto his elbow, and Cougar thinks fleetingly that he’s got to be the biggest small guy he’s ever seen. Then Cougar realizes he’s staring, and drops his own gaze to the table.

“Jake,” Dr. Benson says. “Come in. This is Carlos Alvarez. He came in yesterday evening. You can sit, if you want, Jake.” She’s added that last bit because Jake is still standing in the doorway, looking everywhere except Cougar.

“Hello,” Cougar says. Jake nearly flinches, but he nods, and comes and sits. Cougar finds himself assessed in tiny peripheral glances. He wonders what Jake’s seeing exactly.

“You’re real, then,” Jake says, holding his glance for a beat longer. As greetings go, it’s certainly one of the more unique ones Cougar’s gotten. Cougar nods.

Jake starts nodding too, somewhere between an affirmation and a self-soothing motion.

“Okay. Thanks. Could I… I mean --.” He takes a deep breath. “Okay, I see things, right? And I can’t tell if what I’m seeing is real, or if other people can see it, or whatever, but I can touch real stuff, right?” He reaches out and raps his knuckles on the table top, a sharp, authoritative sound for someone so jittery. “Table’s real, I can touch it. Guy sitting on the desk looking all worried – his name’s Pooch by the way –,” Jake’s looked up, is looking at empty air with such focus that Cougar finds himself glancing there, too. “If I try and touch him, he’s... he moves out of the way, okay? Not even like he vanishes, he just… he’s out of reach. He’s not real. But…” Jake turns his head and looks properly at Cougar. “I can touch real things. That’s how I know they’re real. Can… can I touch you?”

Cougar finds himself holding Jake’s steady gaze. Jake’s eyes are blue behind his glasses, and his expression is simultaneously frightened and utterly open.

Cougar reaches across his own body, and stretches his left hand into the space between them. Jake stares at it for a moment. He reaches out and closes the gap, closes his fingers around Cougar’s fingers, squeezing lightly firmly, holding for a few brief moments; the oddest handshake Cougar’s ever received. Then Jake lets him go, and shrinks back into his own chair.

“Okay,” Jake says, half to himself. “Okay, real then. I, um… but you’re in the military, right? Army? Stuff like that?”

Cougar glances at Dr. Benson, not sure if he’s supposed to answer that, but she’s nodding soothingly, managing to direct it to both of them at once, somehow. 

“Sí,” Cougar says. Spanish is easier somehow. It slips through the tightness in his chest. 

Jake is still nodding, but he’s tensing up again.

“It’s okay, Jake,” Dr. Benson says. “Sometimes –” 

“And you’re a sniper, right?” Jake says. Dr. Benson cuts short her spiel to glance at Cougar, sharply. That little tidbit had not been part of her briefing, apparently.

“Well,” Jake amends, oblivious. “You _were_ a sniper, I guess.” They all glance down at Cougar’s cast.

“Sí,” Cougar agrees softly. “I was.”

Jake’s nodding is intensifying, becoming a rocking. “ _How?_ ” His voice cracks. “If all this –” He gestures jerkily to the empty desk edge, to the empty doorway. “If that’s all made up in my head, if Aisha’s all made up, how do I know about real life stuff? Because, Zoe, he _moves like Aisha_ and that’s how I know he was a sharpshooter and how do the things in my head get so real?” Jake’s choking back tears, suddenly, and the thread of panic is back, tightening Cougar’s chest.

“Jake,” Dr. Benson says. She’s back into soothing mode, rallying hard. “Eidetic memory,” she says, shorthand for an entire paragraph that Cougar’s missing. “You would have seen recruiters on your campus, maybe, and stored how they moved.”

Cougar wants to point out that recruiting was for the charmers, the smooth talkers, and snipers are not generally among their number. But Jake is gradually falling apart under her words, and Cougar cannot even deal with the sight of tears on a grown man’s face, and the thread of panic is roping around his chest, pulling impossibly tight, and … well, if the military has been good for anything, it’s taught him how to beat a hasty exit from a room with a veneer of respect. He beats it.

Dr. Benson presumably spreads the word, after; staff are gently concerned in Cougar’s direction all morning. He reports for his pain meds exactly on schedule and musters up words like: _I’m fine_ and _thank you_ even if he can’t quite do the smile. It’s enough.

He’s heading towards the dining hall when he sees Jake again. Or rather, he registers someone’s broad shoulders ahead, and his body takes over, is flattening himself back against the wall and locking his muscles, preparing himself to take evasive action because his body is supplying the correct response to _weapon_ , whole seconds before his conscious brain is supplying _Jake Jensen_ and _empty handed_.

Jake isn’t moving like he’s empty handed, though. He’s got his hands close against his chest like he’s holding a rifle, and he’s peering around the corner up ahead, signalling _stop_ to whoever is behind him, and Cougar instinctively holds position. The way must be clear: Jake signals _go, go, go_ , rhythmically, while he scans the hospital corridor, then abruptly _stop_ because –

“Captain!” It’s the nurse from the dispensary, turning the corner. She’s just as startled as Cougar, maybe, but she calms substantially faster. “It’s time to eat, captain.”

Jake glances at things Cougar can’t see, and then Jake signals _stand down_ and slings the rifle that isn’t there.

In the dining hall, Jake sits alone. He eats, talking softly, gesturing and laughing, in the direction of the empty chairs. Apparently the dining hall is safe, even if the corridor outside isn’t – Jake is relaxed now, his grin the warm smile of someone among friends.

It’s Cougar’s turn to stare. Cougar’s never had that; a team that made Jake’s face light up like that, that looked as if they had his back. Knowing that he’s jealous of a crazy man doesn’t make the ache any less.

Cougar focuses on his food. He eats meatballs off his fork, and tries not to concentrate too hard on the smell. It tastes okay, it just smells like the bottom of the pot burned, and they served it up anyway. It smells like…smoke? Cougar looks up as the kitchen fire alarm goes off.

The shrieking sound feels like it’s piercing deep into his ears, and the adrenaline from earlier surges through him again, lifting him to his feet and making it hard to think clearly. It’s too loud, too much, there are too many people shouting, freaked out or excited by the noise, and the staff shouting to keep control. The walls are closing in, suddenly, and there’s not enough oxygen. Someone shoves past him, and it takes all Cougar’s self-control not to lash out while his heart beats wildly in his chest.

 _Civilians, non-combatants_ he thinks deliberately. He tucks his hands as best he can into his armpits and walks backwards, crashing into chairs, but hitting the wall and steadying himself against it for a moment.

The alarm shrieks on and on, but the staff are herding people out the main doors, regaining a semblance of control. There’s still not enough oxygen, and Cougar slides along the wall and out the side door into the relative cool of the courtyard, away from the crowd.

He should be reporting for muster out at the evacuation point, but one glimpse of the surge of people heading out the front doors is enough to make him break out into a sweat. He crosses the courtyard instead and heads into the main corridor of the southern wing. The fire alarm is substantially muted this far from the kitchens. It’s quieter here, and the corridor is wide enough that he can breathe, and long enough that he can pace and pace until the blood stops pounding in his ears.

He really should be heading back. The last thing the staff need is to have to track down someone who was perfectly capable of turning up to get his name ticked off. And yet… there’s a voice, faint enough that it first takes him a moment to confirm it’s outside his head, and then a minute or two longer to trace. The row of consultation rooms.

Jake Jensen is curled up in the far corner of Dr. Benson’s room, his knees drawn tight up under his chin. He’s shoved the desk up against the door – a deterrent, but usually a surmountable barricade, if Cougar wasn’t currently feeling about as strong as a week-old kitten.

Jake’s looking around the room, talking in quiet, sporadic bursts. His eyes are red, although he’s not crying at the moment. He’s also not Cougar’s damn problem, really isn’t, but Cougar raps lightly on the window anyway.

Jake jerks, fear washing over his face, and they stare at each other for a long moment. Cougar still has the option of turning back; he can tell the staff where Jake’s holed up, when he reports for muster. He doesn’t need to … glance to either end of the corridor, raise his hands and signal that it’s safe.

Jake glances around his circle, a question in his face and in the cadence of his muffled words. He nods, and then looks up at Cougar and nods again. The clamber to his feet is slow and laborious, but he achieves vertical, and with Jake pulling on the desk and Cougar pushing at the door, they clear enough space for Cougar to squeeze through. Then without a word, they push the desk back into place against the door. It’s not an ideal location to defend, but with one to watch the far window, and the other to watch the door, their odds just got better.

“Hey, my man.” Jake’s smile is a brittle façade. “Move over you assholes, let him have a seat. Sit anywhere, they’ll move.” Cougar blinks, but it’s the ease with which he can tell when he’s being addressed that’s somehow the most disconcerting. Cougar surveys the walls, picks the one that gives him both views. “Have I introduced you around, yet?” Cougar shakes his head.

“Sorry, my manners get sort of scattershot sometimes. Next to you, that’s Clay, he gives the orders and scowls at me when I ignore him. Shut up, dude, you do so scowl, it’s adorable. Chick perched on the table giving the door the evil eye, that’s Aisha, she’s a sniper like you are… were, whatever. This here is Pooch…” 

Each time Jake points or nods, he focuses on empty air, and each time Cougar has to resist the urge to follow Jake’s gaze. “Pooch is our transport extraordinaire. If it’s got an engine, he can make it go.”

It should be unnerving, sitting behind a barricaded door with a certified crazy person introducing him to an empty room. It’s… not. Hell, Cougar had felt less comfortable sitting in a living room playing poker with Wade and his team than he did sitting here. “And Roque looks all intense and scary, but it’s all an act.” Whatever Roque says in reply makes Jake laugh. “Sometimes. Sort of. When he wants you to think it is.” Jake laughs again. “Anyway, what do they call you?”

He’s out of the military, now. He’s done with call signs and nicknames and … “Cougar,” he says. Because apparently half the room _believing_ so utterly that they were surrounded by military personnel is enough to trip Cougar back into old mindsets. Are they old enough to be old mindsets if he hasn’t had time to form civilian ones?

“Ha!” Jake grins in sudden triumph. “I win! You’re not a Carlos. I mean, you are, it’s your _name_ , but you were something else, too.” He nods decisively. “Cougar.”

“You win?” Cougar asks. It seems a less complicated topic than his own name.

“Yeah, we bet on things, to pass the time. Aisha bet you were a sniper, she would have won that by a country mile if anyone had been willing to bet against her. None of us were, for the record.”

Cougar nods, slowly. Jake’s looking... around the circle, distinct from looking around the room, nodding slightly, a little grin lighting his eyes through his tiredness

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I gotta say, you fit in really well, man. Are you sure you’re still... I mean...” Jake’s cheeks are reddening, and he shifts his gaze down to Cougar’s feet. It takes Cougar a moment to get it, but then he extends his leg out straight, well into Jake’s personal space. Jake raises his hand, but it’s a long few seconds before he can touch his fingers to the toe of Cougar’s boot.

Cougar’s boot is thick enough that he can’t feel the contact, but relief sags Jake’s shoulders.

“Thanks,” Jake mutters.

Cougar shunts closer, so that Jake can touch with leaning, and they sit like that for a bit, with Jake loosely clasping Cougar’s foot.

“So, um, in possibly less fun betting stakes,” Jake begins. “And you totally don’t have to answer this because personal shit, but like... I bet that they made you do something pretty bad, that you’d, you know...” He nods to Cougar’s cast. “Pulp your own hand, or whatever.”

“No,” Cougar says, immediately. Jake glances up, startled by the force of it. “No,” Cougar repeats, softer, but it’s important that ... that someone knows. 

“They...” Cougar falters. Wade’s voice takes over in his mind: _We’re going to smoke them out of their nest, give them a taste of their own goddamn guerrilla medicine_.“They did not make me. They _told_ me to...”

“Illegal order?” Jake asks. He’s still holding on to Cougar’s foot, and Cougar suddenly desperately doesn’t want him to let go.

_He’s in the zone, breathing slow and deep, his heart rate steady, scoping and assessing and firing somewhere beyond even conscious thought. The man dashing to position, using buildings as cover, but not quite well enough – headshot. The guy running low across the roof holding a rifle – double tap._

“I didn’t think so,” Cougar admits. “Not at first.”

 _There’s the low, vibrating_ crump-whump of explosion and brief jubilant whoops in Cougar’s ear as the armory goes. “Excellent work, boys.” Wade is grinning. It’s only over comms, and Cougar still wants to lean away from that smirk. “Phase mop-up is go. You find it, and you can carry it, it’s yours.”

“We were running counter-guerilla ops against…” Secret missions are still secret, apparently; he cannot bring himself to say it out loud. “Mission parameters were to disrupt their operations, their supply chains, by any means required.” 

_The breeze that he’s working against, that is drifting smoke across his line of fire, is bringing him other things. The faint, thin wail of a baby._

__In Dr. Benson’s therapy room, Cougar closes his eyes. ”My commanding officer decided to run a… morale disrupting operation, against the guerrillas.”

_“Civilians on site,” Cougar reports into his comm._

_“We know.” Wade, impatient, distracted. “Maintain the perimeter, Cougar."_

He’s looking _now, not just for defensive points and movement on roofs, but_ seeing _things. Not just buildings but houses, with gardens in the back and toys in the front yards._

And he realizes, then, what sort of morale disruption Wade has in mind.

He can’t… he thuds his cast against the floor, hard enough to shoot nauseating pain up his arm, and for blessed seconds he cannot speak, cannot think. He breathes, and it’s nearly enough to ground him.

“When we got back...” he tries.

 _The quiet accolades, and the even quieter ceremony. The two-star general closing his hand around Cougar’s, holding on firmly. “Well done, son. Magnificent work out there.”_

“When we got back, they were not going to punish us. And they were going to ask us to do it again. I...I decided I did not want to.”

Cougar steels himself and looks up. Jake is watching him, calmly and intently.

“Good choice,” Jake says simply, and Cougar has to look away again, blinking hard. “I mean,” Jake continues after a beat. “Your methods are… kinda extreme, but when they want you, when you’re good, they don’t want to let you go.”

Cougar glances at him. “What are you good at?” 

“I’m comms, and tech.” He smiles, still brittle, but a little less forced this time. “Good job for a motor mouth like me, huh? I hack us our intel, I get us into places, and I get us – get us out of places… ” Jake’s gaze drifts over Cougar’s shoulder, and he’s staring at the wall, the actual wall, slightly unfocussed.

 _Until one day you couldn’t_. The thought surfaces in Cougar’s mind, and once it’s there it sits, implacable and certain.

“Jake?” Cougar asks, because Jake is still unfocussed, and his breath is starting to come in deeper shivers. Jake startles, and lets go of Cougar’s boot like it’s suddenly hot. Jake draws his legs up again, curling up tight on himself, and groans softly.

“Jake, what –?”

“Fuckers,” Jake whispers, and it’s not directed at Cougar, or… anyone else in the room. “It was just toast or something, you morons, you don’t need to come for _toast_ …”

It takes Cougar a moment, but then he picks up on what Jake is hearing: the faint wail of sirens. Fire engines, responding to the smoke alarm.

“It’s okay,” Cougar says reflexively, and could kick himself, because Jake shoots him a scathing look even as he starts to shiver. The sirens are getting closer and closer, and Jake’s squeezed his eyes closed and wrapped his arms around his head like he’s being beaten.

“It’s all right,” Cougar says, hoping for the comforting sign of a death-glare, but Jake is beyond that, starting to rock back and forth minutely. His lips are moving in nearly-audible speech, a chant or prayer that Cougar doesn’t recognize, and then he does.

“Captain Jacob Kenneth Jensen,” Jake is whispering. “Four-nine-eight-six-zero-zero-two…”

Horror, cold and crawling, spreads over Cougar’s scalp. He’s moving before he has time to process anything, never mind the correct way to bring someone out of a flashback.

“Captain!” he barks, lets his fear pass his lips as anger. It’s _wrong_ at the gut-level, to be yelling at superior officer, but Jake flinches, pausing half a breath before rattling onwards. “…neth Jensen. Four-nine --.”

“ _Captain_ , look at me!” 

Jake’s eyes jerk open. He’s panting with fear, sweating and shaking, but he focuses. The sirens are close enough to set even Cougar’s teeth on edge, but Jake is focusing, waiting for another order. Shit.

“Sit down,” Cougar snaps, and Jake is nowhere near with it enough to realize they’re already on the floor. “Sit down and shut up, we need to keep our position secure.” This is how _Wade_ would talk, he realizes, and it’s a wave of revulsion. He has no idea how Clay would address any of them, but Jake is nodding, swallowing, and still focused. The sirens cut out, and Jake sags, his mouth opening, but all he does is pant. It’s working, but Cougar can’t keep it up.

“Come here,” he says, softly. Jake follows the order blindly, practically crawling against Cougar’s side. Cougar wraps both arms around Jake’s back, despite the awkwardness of the cast.

“It’s okay,” Cougar whispers against Jake’s hair. Jake doesn’t correct him this time – he just brings his own hands up and clings tight to Cougar’s shirt. Somewhere outside is the approach of a truck: the rev of the engine, the beat of sudden silence and then the creaking and slamming of doors. Male voices. Jake cringes, but doesn’t speak.

“It’s all right,” Cougar murmurs. “I’ll keep watch. I won’t let them in here.” Jake nods minutely, and doesn’t relax at all. Cougar’s not sure how he’s going to keep that promise: he’s exhausted all over again, and there are footsteps coming down the hall. Jake whimpers. Shit.

The footsteps are coming towards them, and Cougar only has enough time and headspace to deduce that they’re far too light for firefighter boots before Dr. Benson’s face appears at the glass in the door.

They stare at each other, mutually startled, and then she’s all business, glancing between the table barricade and the two of them on the floor. She points to herself, then to the far window, and disappears from the door.

“Jake?” Cougar murmurs. Jake doesn’t make a sound, but he’s got a death grip on Cougar’s shirt still, and that probably counts. “Dr. Benson’s here. Can she come in?”

“Zoe?” he mumbles, and the relief and hope there makes Cougar’s chest ache.

“She’s coming,” Cougar promises, and then she’s there at the far window, expertly prying the frame and climbing through like she breaks into her own office every day. Maybe Jake barricades himself in here on a regular basis, for all Cougar knows. She’s wearing jeans and a ratty T-shirt, and there’s dirt on her knees, smeared across one cheek, and under her fingernails. She sits down across from them, staring.

“Jake?” she asks, hesitantly, wonderingly.

Jake makes a small noise, and shifts against Cougar’s side. Cougar nods in translation, glancing between the two of them.

“Jake, do you know where you are?”

Jake nods minutely. “Haa,” he manages, takes a breath, tries again. “Hospital,” he says, and Dr. Benson exhales so hard she slumps for a moment.

“That’s good Jake,” she says, fervently. “That’s really, really good.”

“I’m sorry,” Jake mutters, so low that Dr. Benson has to lean in to hear. She part-opens her mouth, hesitating, choosing her words with care. 

“What for?”

“...made a mess,” Jake whispers, mostly into Cougar’s shirt, and Cougar mouths the words, gestures subtly to the overturned chairs, the desk barricade. Her smile is somewhere between affectionate and exasperated. 

“Hey,” she says, and there’s a chuckle in her voice. “Have you _seen_ the state of the kitchen? I’d much rather be hanging out here with you two than having to clean that up.”

“You’re not on roster,” Jake says, more distinctly although he doesn’t raise his head from Cougar’s chest.

“I’m not,” she agrees. “Which means I get penalty rates. Thank you for your donation to my next overseas trip, dude, sincerely.”

Jake _hehs_ softly, but doesn’t sound convinced.

The firemen are outside, heading back to their truck, trading jokes and slamming doors.

“Beeping, Jake,” Dr. Benson warns softly. “But it means they’re leaving. It’s okay, we’re here. Just breathe with me.”

Cougar put his left hand over Jake’s ear again, and Jake covers his hand with his own. Cougar _knows_ it’s just a reversing warning, but listening while Jake shivers and flinches in his arms turns a vague irritation into something horrible. He wants to march out there and muscle his way into the truck, hack at wires until the damn sound _stopped_ already, for the love of -- . The beeping cuts out, and with a rev of engines, the truck recedes into the distance.

They sit for a minute, quiet, while Jake’s breathing evens out.

“Pills? Bed?” Dr. Benson asks, and it’s an offering. Jake nods immediately, his chin digging into Cougar’s side. 

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, please.”

“How’re your legs?”

Jake shifts, moving his legs experimentally. He shakes his head. 

“Not good,” he mumbles.

“We can help you walk,” Cougar offers. 

Jake thinks about that for a moment, and nods again. 

Getting up sucks, but he’s not so tired that he can’t act as a brace to get Jake to his feet. Dr. Benson drags the table clear enough that they can get out the door. He and Jake shuffle out of the room, arms around each other’s shoulders, and Cougar isn’t sure who’s leaning on whom. This must be something of what growing old feels like, he wonders, and he savors it for a beat.

“My room’s this way,” Jake murmurs, and guides Cougar deeper into the south wing while Dr. Benson heads off for pills. The corridors are starting to fill with people released from muster, and Jake cringes against Cougar the first time someone shouts.

“It’s okay,” Cougar says, but he’s still relieved when Dr. Benson comes back with the now familiar paper cup. Jake takes his pills without a word, and even before they reach Jake’s room, Cougar can feel Jake’s grip relaxing on his shoulder, the tension seeping out of Jake’s muscles. He wishes he could say the same for himself. He wonders if Dr. Benson is allowed to slip him something, too. 

Jake’s room is... a bedroom. It’s the same dimensions as Cougar’s room, the same white walls and single bed, but the bedspread is brightly-colored, there are photographs and children’s drawings all over the walls, and half-assembled computer equipment on the floor. There are tiny ornaments on the windowsill, there long enough to gather a little dust. It looks like a room someone’s been living in for some time. 

By the time they cross the room, Jake’s nearly asleep on his feet. Dr. Benson folds back the covers, and Cougar tries to get most of Jake onto the bed. Jake flops onto his back, and it’s near enough that they can cover Jake entirely with the blankets.

“Shut up guys,” Jake mumbles, eyes closed. “I’m fine. Lemme sleep.” Then, distinctly to Cougar somehow: “Thanks.”

“De nada,” Cougar whispers. Jake raises his hand, and Cougar traps it gently with his own and holds on until Jake starts quietly to snore. Jake’s face is smooth, relaxed in a way that makes him look like an utterly different person.

“Carlos,” Dr. Benson says from the doorway. “It’s okay to leave him. The best thing for him now is sleep.”

It still takes a minute or two before he’s willing to let go, but he follows her out in the corridor.

“Is he going to be okay?” Cougar asks as soon as she closes Jake’s door. She makes a face, somewhere between doubt and disbelief.

“Yes,” she says. “That’s the most responsive I’ve ever seen him after a smoke alarm, never mind a fire truck. That was amazing.” She smiles, a quick, wry expression. “I know we’re supposed to value every patient’s recovery equally, but can we keep you for a while?”

Cougar can’t bring himself to smile back. There’s anger, bubbling somewhere inside. Letting it out would be dangerous. He breathes through his nose instead.

“Jake’s not crazy,” he says, as calmly as he can.

Dr. Benson makes another face, this one much closer to a wince. “Walk with me,” she says, and Cougar can take the hint; he bites his tongue and follows. She leads them out the back of the southern wing, to a tiny wizened garden with a couple of chairs. The smoker’s corner, judging by the ashtrays.

“Sorry about the stink,” she says, and he takes a seat opposite her. “But we’re less likely to get disturbed here. D’you smoke?”

He shakes his head. “Bad for our lungs,” he says, not realizing he’d slipped into _we_ snipers, until it was past his lips. She doesn’t comment on it.

“That it is. I used to. I miss it, sometimes.”

Cougar nods, trying not to let his impatience leak through.

“Jake’s not crazy,” Cougar tries again. “He’s got combat trauma.”

Dr. Benson winces again, looks about to disagree.

“He’s got a _service number_ , you can track that, you –.”

“Captain Jacob Kenneth Jensen, four-nine-eight-six-zero-zero-two-seven etcetera.” Her jaw is tight, but her words manage to be gentle. “Jake’s been with us for two years. We know, okay? We know.”

“Then why the hell didn’t you call –.” 

She raises her hand, and he shuts up, tries to drag both hands through his hair in frustration.

“We did. _I_ did. There’s no record of a Jacob Kenneth Jensen in any branch of the military. His sister brought him in; he’d been reciting himself hoarse. We thought it was going to be a straight forward ‘your boy fell through the cracks, come and get him’, but there was nothing, nothing at all.”

Cougar closes his mouth, tries to digest that. He remembers in the corridor, looking down at Jake’s hands and his mind filling in _weapon_. 

“Jake was tortured,” Cougar tries again. 

“No,” she says, then grimaces. “Maybe. He _believes_ he was.” 

" _I_ believe he was,” Cougar hisses. She nods. 

__“I don’t know what to believe,” she says. “Seriously, I … Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Clay, Captain William Roque, Captain Aisha al-Fadhil, Sergeant Linwood Porteous, all captured and later shot by enemy combatants while on a covert operation in Afghanistan. Have you ever heard those names? Have you ever heard of a female sniper in the US military?”_ _

__Cougar shakes his head, slowly. He wants to have, but… “I’m sorry.”_ _

__“Me too,” she says. “I thought the military was… stonewalling, or something, at first. I called every damn branch or office or _outpost_ I could get my hands on, because I thought there would be answers there somewhere, some corroboration that might help. I… _someone_ left him unsupervised with an internet connection in his room for three nights – well, that doesn’t mean anything to you, sorry. Suffice to say, if there’s information out there that Jake Jensen can’t find, it doesn’t exist.” _ _

__She rubs her hands over her face. “It was a bad time after that. Very bad. I wasn’t sure if we were going to get him back from that. But he did come back, eventually.”_ _

__Cougar nods._ _

__She gives a tight flash of a grin. “I never said this out loud, but I might have researched paranormal phenomena. They don’t fit the pattern of demon possession, or any sort of ghost haunting. If you were wondering.”_ _

__His dream – memory – of smoke and screaming rises unbidden in his mind._ _

__“Better if they were ghosts, sometimes,” he says. “Better to be fighting or surrendering to something outside your own head.”_ _

__Dr. Benson tilts her head slightly. She’s looking at him, all of him, and he has to resist the urge to look away._ _

__“Many people are fighting their own head. We all are, I think.” She nods to the cast. “Was that fighting, or surrendering?”_ _

__“Fighting,” he says immediately. She raises an eyebrow, interested, not judging._ _

__“I… I did not like what the army was asking me to do,” he says, slowly, carefully. “It was not honorable; it made me worse than the people we were supposed to be fighting. So I fought back, just not in the way they expected. I won myself time, and space and…” he looks around at the scraggly garden. “Here. I bought myself here.”_ _

__“You did,” she agrees. “I read your medical report. There’s a good chance you’ll get full movement back, if you take care of your hand. Do you want it back?”_ _

__He never wants to be able to pull a trigger again. But there’s a civilian world out there, intimidatingly, overwhelmingly huge. If it wants him._ _

__He can’t meet her gaze. “What do you do after you’ve done bad things? Terrible things?”_ _

__She stretches her legs out, crossing her feet at the ankles. “You do good things.”_ _

__He scoffs, somewhere between a choke and a disbelieving chuckle._ _

__“Seriously,” she counters. “I mean that in a general life-guide sort of way, and as a comment on your behavior. There’s a guy who’s going to wake up tomorrow and he’s going to know where he is, and when he is, and be able to interact with other corporeal human beings because you helped him out.”_ _

__Cougar shrugs, awkward._ _

__“That’s a big damn deal; you didn’t have to do that.”_ _

“Of _course_ I did.” 

__Dr. Benson smiles, like he’s proved her point, and maybe he has. “The past is fixed. But we get to choose, over and over again, what we do now.”_ _

__“Except I’m exhausted.” He’s aware he’s snappish, but he really is tired._ _

__“It can absolutely be exhausting,” she says. “But sometimes it feels pretty good, too.”_ _

__He doesn’t want to get pulled into her smile, but he find it tugging at the edges of his mouth anyway._ _

__~*~_ _

__Cougar steps into the cafeteria the next morning and immediately starts scanning for Jake. Jake’s already in the queue, and he abandons his spot to make a beeline through the tables to meet Cougar halfway. Jake’s slow-moving, fuzzy from the drugs still, Cougar supposes, but he’s smiling, tiredly._ _

__“Hey,” Jake says. “How you doing?”_ _

__“Good,” Cougar says, and holds out his hand. Jake’s tired smile warms into a tired grin, and he grabs Cougar’s hand and squeezes, warm and firm and brief, like that first proper meeting in Dr. Benson’s room._ _

__“You hungry? I’m starving. The bacon is woefully disappointing here, I gotta say...” Cougar follows Jake back to the line, and goes for scrambled eggs, hash browns, toast. Jake puts far too many sausages on his own plate, and starts cutting them up as soon as they find a table._ _

Jake shifts his attention subtly to the empty space to his right as he slices. “The sausages in Siberia _were_ pretty fucking incredible, but after those MREs, _anything_ was going to taste good, seriously, there’s no way you could have forgotten those, they were _vile_ …” Still absently chattering to whoever was sitting on his right, Jake tips half his sausages onto Cougar’s plate. Cougar stares at the neat, bite-sized pieces. 

__He couldn’t have competed with Jake’s prattle, even if Jake hadn’t been holding a five-way conversation, but under the table, he presses his leg against Jake’s in thanks. Jake pauses for half a breath and then rambles on. But Jake doesn’t pull away, and they sit like that, warming each other, a silence of bodies in the cacophony of sounds that make up the dining hall._ _

__Jake coaxes Cougar into a group therapy session; it’s a circle of people crying and talking about trauma and secrets, and it’s Jake’s turn to cope while Cougar hunches under his hat, unable to say a word in the face of such emotion._ _

__

__After, Jake produces a pack of cards as a sort of apology and they sit together in a corner of the rec room. They play wordless, silent poker, betting with toothpicks swiped from the kitchen, until Cougar feels okay enough to raise the brim of his hat._ _

__The day, and then the days, roll on._ _

__“You seem to be making friends,” Dr. Radcliff smiles. Cougar shrugs, but he sort of wants to smile back. “You’re eating well. How’s the sleeping going?”_ _

__“Better,” Cougar says, and it’s true. The meds are helping, now that he’s adjusted to them. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s beginning to sleep better than he has in years. Dr. Radcliff is making far too many notes, still, but this time they’re discharge papers. “If you want them, that is.” Dr. Radcliff says, his fingers hovering over his keyboard._ _

__Cougar calls Gabriella from Dr. Radcliff’s desk phone. She swears at him again, and they manage not to cry on each other, although it’s a close thing on Cougar’s end._ _

__He emerges from Dr. Radcliff’s office holding papers and more freedom and uncertainty than he knows what to do with. It’s terrifying, when he lets himself think about it too closely._ _

__“Hey, Cougs.” Jake’s coming up behind him. “You want to go play –” Jake spots the pages in Cougar’s hand, and stops mid-sentence and mid-stride. Cougar wants to be thinking about post-army life in excruciating detail, or be having his fingernails pulled, anything rather than live the next few moments._ _

__Jake takes half a breath, a sip of air into his mouth, and his face cracks into a brittle, too-bright smile._ _

__“Hey,” Jake says. “You’re getting out, then? Congrats man, that’s great.”_ _

__“Not yet,” Cougar says hastily. “Tomorrow. My sister’s driving up tonight.”_ _

__“Yeah? Cool. Jennifer and Beth are visiting tomorrow, too. Maybe they can talk secret sister business while she’s here. It’ll be good.” Jake is trying so hard to mean it, and fuck how this usually works, fuck anyone watching: Cougar grabs Jake’s hand and holds on tight. Jake clings back, and swallows once, twice. It’s the first time Cougar’s ever seen him lost for words._ _

__“I’m sorry,” Cougar says. This is so not how he’d wanted to do this. “I’ll come back and visit.”_ _

__Jake shrugs, one shouldered, and keeps clinging. “You don’t have to.”_ _

__“I have an apartment,” Cougar counters. “I’m not even going that far away.” Even emotionally gut-punched, Jake’s mind still ticks over at twice the speed Cougar’s expecting._ _

__“Your team must have doubleplus sucked, if you didn’t want to do down time with them on base.”_ _

__Cougar brushes that off. “Or you could get a day pass, come and visit me instead?” He doesn’t even know if Jake’s eligible for that sort of thing, and he wants to kick himself the second the idea is out of his mouth._ _

__Jake’s expression twists, like that’s too much to hope for. “I’m holding you to that,” Jake says, and redoubles his grip, tight enough to make Cougar’s good hand ache. Cougar clings back just as hard._ _

__~*~_ _

__“If anything happens to him, I will have your heads on spikes.” Dr. Benson says, low and level._ _

__“Yes ma’am,” Cougar murmurs. Beside him, Jennifer Jensen is nodding, and looks like she’s biting back a grin._ _

__“Xanax,” Jennifer says, and starts ticking things off on her fingers. “Emergency phone numbers on speed dial, minute details of where we’re going, exact time we’ll be back, synchronized watches.”_ _

__Dr. Benson looks like she wants to find something to object to, still._ _

__“Seriously, Zoe,” Jennifer says. “Between Jake’s imaginary military skills and Carlos here’s actual military skills, I think we can pull off a mission to the local park. We got this, for real.”_ _

__Dr. Benson laughs, in spite of herself, and rubs a hand over her face. “ _Spikes_ ,” she repeats, but she heads out to get him._ _

__“Still time to make it a picnic at my place,” Cougar says out the side of his mouth. Jennifer does grin at him, then._ _

__“No offense, but your apartment is tiny, and there’s no way we’d fit ten people in there, even if four aren’t corporeal.”_ _

__Cougar snorts, but then Jake is coming down the corridor towards them, and Cougar has no focus for anything else. Jake’s moving hesitantly, like he’s not sure how to greet, and to hell with that – Cougar steps forward and opens his arms, and Jake stumbles into him and clings._ _

__Cougar grabs him, half steadying him, half relishing being able to hug him properly now that the cast is off and the stitches are out. It’s a good feeling, all round._ _

__“You came back,” Jake says, and his voice is thick._ _

__“I did,” Cougar agrees. “ _And_ you’re coming out on a day pass. Did we remember to bet on that?”_ _

__“I put in bets for both of us, double or nothing. We get all the toothpicks, by the way.”_ _

__Jennifer shifts into Cougar’s sightline. She looks a little misty, even if the set of her shoulders is trying for impatient task master. “Guys? This is cute and all, but I have a synchronized watch, a schedule, and the threat of decapitation hanging over my head. “_ _

__Jake loosens his grip, reluctantly. He looks out through the front doors, at the sunlight and warm spring day outside. Some of the hesitance flickers back across his face._ _

__“I got your six,” Cougar murmurs. Jake grins, brittle, but it makes it all the way to his eyes._ _

__“Ten-hut,” Jake murmurs. ”Forward march.” They fall into single file and move out into the world._ _

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Team Means Never Alone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/957398) by [omens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/omens/pseuds/omens)
  * [Phenomenology](https://archiveofourown.org/works/988154) by [mific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/pseuds/mific)




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